Sunday, April 18, 2010

The Day The Earth Stood Still

At 630PM GMT April 18th 1930 the announcement that "there is no news today" followed by 10 minutes of light piano music replaced the regularly scheduled BBC newscast.

The beauty of this paradox is delicate and worthy of slow and thoughtful consumption. Not only did they make news by stating that there wasn't any, but they hinted at deeper insights into the nature of being and nothingness. For how can we even conceive of nothingness when the fact that it can be thought proves that it is conceptual, and in being conceived it is. Since something that is cannot fail to exist; it is certainly not nothingness even if it is.

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About Me

I am an adult onset atheist. I cannot blame parents, society, or an unhappy childhood on my decision to abandon all things theist. I clung for a while to a deist god, but it too was eventually thrown onto the trash-heap. Why insist that I am believing in a “god” when “gravity” or “electromagnetic radiation” are better names? I finally found that I was clinging to the weakest shadow of a deist god because I connected the belief in this imaginary entity with so many good things in the world. One day I realized that those good things would be better without the residue of a belief in god contaminating them.